Mcveigh's Attorneys Win Key Rounds In Their Fight To Save His Life

DENVER — Attorneys for convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh began a legal sprint to save their client's life Tuesday.

They won several key arguments before U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, who said he is determined not to turn the penalty phase of the case ''into some kind of lynching.''

In a series of rulings from the bench the day before the jury begins hearing testimony on whether McVeigh should die or serve the rest of his life in prison for the April 19, 1995, bombing, Matsch diminished the government's opportunities for appealing to the jury's emotions with graphic and maudlin testimony and exhibits.

When prosecutor Sean Connelly said there would be several wedding photographs of victims introduced, Matsch curtly replied, ''No, there won't.''

He also excluded testimony about how relatives identified victims, a poem written by the father of one victim, a video of a routine day at a credit-union office in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and testimony about a mourning ceremony outside the building by one family.

''We have to guard this hearing to ensure that the ultimate result and the jury's decision is truly a moral response to appropriate information rather than an emotional response,'' Matsch said.

McVeigh was found guilty Monday of all 11 counts of murder and conspiracy in the explosion that killed 168 people and injured more than 500 others.

Tuesday's legal skirmishing came as government prosecutors prepared to call about 45 witnesses to bolster their case that McVeigh should be put to death by lethal injection. The 12 jurors must be unanimous in their decision to sentence McVeigh to death or he will receive life in prison without the possibility of parole.

To satisfy the demands of the federal death-penalty law, the government must demonstrate that there were enough aggravating circumstances to warrant a penalty of death. Among those circumstances are that the crime was particularly heinous, that the victims were particularly vulnerable and that the convicted murderer intended to kill his victims and acted with premeditation.

Matsch said he would not allow the government to claim that the 21 children in the building's day-care center were an especially ''vulnerable'' group.

The judge said prosecutors could argue that the building's entire population was vulnerable but could not single out the children because it could not be proved that McVeigh knew they were there.